


Out of the Night

by boxparade



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Christmas, Established Relationship, Family, Fluff and Angst, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:28:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Spencer doesn’t move an inch while Brendon waits for the call to ring into voicemail. It takes eight rings. He counts every time.</i>
</p><p>A story about love and family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Night

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this awhile ago, off the top of my head, and then I lost track of it among the mess of words and files and stories floating around in my head or on my computer. When I found it again I kept thinking I wanted to turn it into something bigger, because in my head there's so much in this universe that I want to explore, but I realized that I was never going to be the one to do that, so here we are instead. Take that as you will.
> 
> Warning: It gets a bit sappy at the end. I wrote the ending as a quick wrap-up at 4am, so forgive me.

Sometimes, Brendon thinks about calling his parents. He thinks through all the things he would tell them, about how Sadie has his mother’s eyes, bright and wide and always smiling, or about how Parker does that thing where he’ll be sitting quietly and then suddenly burst into fits of laughter over nothing, the way Brendon always used to when he was 8 years old and knew all the secrets of the world.

He thinks about telling his mother how amazing she is, because she raised five kids and they’re all adults and living their own lives with their own kids, and that’s incredible. He thinks about the look on his father’s face the moment he sets eyes on Sadie, all wide hips and slim frame and long, ruler-straight hair that shines with flashes of red in the sun. He’d probably be more terrified than Brendon is, and he’s surprised he ever lets her leave the house. She’s only thirteen, he could justify locking her up for another decade or so, and he thinks about how much his father would agree.

There’s Spencer, too, and the way he keeps Brendon grounded and steady and strong, and how he handles all the big things when Brendon sometimes can’t. Like when Parker fell out of a tree when he was five and was screaming bloody murder, and Brendon was wide-eyed and shocked still, having absolutely no idea what to do because his world had just cracked apart, until Spencer just rushed in and carried Parker to the car and called the neighbors over to get Sadie and ushered Brendon along with him and filled out all the paperwork at the ER.

About the way Spencer smiles and it warms the room, and still gives Brendon butterflies sometimes, even after all these years.

The way their house is a story, pictures lining mantels and the fridge and every other available surface, toys still laying around in the corners of the living room, Sadie’s rapidly growing CD collection and the old, battered Christmas list she made back when she still needed Brendon to write it for her, the first on the list being “a baby brother” because Parker’s due date was any day and she was getting bored of waiting. Right underneath it is “drum kit like daddy” to which Spencer still gets teary-eyed about every time Brendon brings it up.

They’re ridiculous and weird and they watch Disney movies way too much considering how old they’re all getting to be, and Sadie’s finally getting to the point where she locks herself in her room for hours on end and yells through the door, and Parker keeps asking increasingly embarrassing questions about sex, and Brendon still blushes at the drop of the hat while Spencer just laughs and laughs.

There are Saturday night movies-and-ice-cream, and every year on St. Patrick’s day they build miniature cities out of cardboard and paper and cover it with gold candy wrappers and green paint and call it “Leprechaun Town” and Sadie still laughs and gets covered in glitter and glue no matter how much she kept saying she was too old for it.

They have a life here. A beautiful, ridiculous, hilarious, amazing life, and they’re a family and there are some days Brendon wakes up with a smile so wide it could crack his face. Some days, he thinks of something and starts reaching for the phone to tell his parents because it was just like when they were all kids, and then it’s like a knife to the chest when he stops because he can’t.

Spencer gets it, most days. Most days, Brendon doesn’t really show it that much, just maybe drops his hand and forces a smile and a laugh and shakes his head a little sadly and moves on. And then there are a few, a select few times when it’s a bit harder than that. It mostly happens around the holidays, on Christmas Day, when they’re still all stuffed from dinner with Spencer’s parents the night before but they all have room for chocolate anyway. Or on Thanksgiving when they all get to talking about what they’re thankful for, and Brendon never forgets to say family, even though only Spencer can see the little twitch in the corner of his eye that tells him Brendon means just a little bit more than what they have.

It’s days like that where Spencer hovers a little closer, doesn’t mind kissing him in front of the kids no matter how much they say “ew” and cover their eyes, keeps a hand always touching some part of Brendon, lightly, reminding Brendon that he’s there and that everything is going to be okay.

He’d known to give Brendon his space that one time that Sadie had to be rushed to the hospital after trying shrimp for the first time, when Spencer had been speeding down the freeway and Brendon had been bent over in the passenger seat with his hands clasped together, breathless and shooting out prayers like mantras for Sadie to be okay, to get through this, to be okay. He never prayed, hardly ever anymore, but Spencer understood anyway, because this was Sadie, this was their daughter, and Brendon was going to burn every damn shellfish in the entire world if it meant his daughter could be safe.

He knew Brendon, too too well, and he never quite knew how to thank Spencer for that, thank him for everything, for giving him this so easily and so readily, no strings attached.

What they had was amazing, and Brendon wouldn’t change it for the world and the moon served to him on a silver platter, but sometimes it hurt a little more than he expected when he realized, again, that his parents didn’t want to be part of his children’s lives.

 

“Bren,” Spencer said, turning the corner and wrapping himself around the wall, tilting his head and watching Brendon nearly crushing the phone in his hand, staring at it like it was going to start moving on its own.

Brendon sighed, “Sorry,” he said, for what was probably the millionth time, because they’d had 13 Christmases as a family and even more as a couple, and every year, without fault, Brendon would stare at the phone for awhile until he built up the guts to call.

Every year, he went straight to voicemail, and at some point Brendon’s pretty sure some part of him gave up because now he doesn’t even leave a message.

Spencer sighs, slinking around the corner and wrapping his arm around Brendon’s waist, burying his face in the bend between Brendon’s neck and his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Brendon says, and he thinks he sounds pretty damn confident. He’s had years to master the technique of being “fine” about this particular subject, and he’s really made some improvements. It’s not nearly enough to convince Spencer, but sometimes he manages to get by without Sadie picking up on anything being wrong, and Sadie is sharp so that’s really quite an achievement.

“Bren,” Spencer repeats, softer, muffled against Brendon’s skin.

Brendon tenses for a moment, and then relaxes all at once, letting out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and curling his free arm around Spencer, pulling him a little closer and trying to steal some of his warmth. He stares at the phone a little longer, loosening his grip, and then does something like a half-shrug and goes to put the phone back on the receiver. “It’s not like they’d care, anyway,” he mumbles, mostly for himself.

Spencer pulls away and looks up, and for a moment Brendon feels like maybe Spencer’s mixed him up with Ryan and is trying to do that mind-melding psychic thing, and then Brendon remembers that he learned to read Spencer’s freaky mind-melding facial expressions years ago, and gets the message.

“It’s fine,” he repeats, because Spencer’s giving him that look that tells him he’s being dumb, and Spencer’s not going to let him get away with it. “No, really,” he presses on, “I’m over it. I’m done. I’m not trying anymore, I’ll just—”

He hears shrieks of laughter coming from the living room, where Sadie and Parker are both curled up in their pajamas watching some hilarious Christmas movie, surrounded by a mess of wrapping paper, presents, and candy wrappers spreading in a slow pattern around their stockings.

Everything hurts a lot more, right then.

Brendon doesn’t think it shows on his face, but it must because Spencer’s giving him one of those sympathetic, puppy-eyes look, and Brendon can’t stand those, he really can’t, because he hates it when he’s part of the reason why Spencer’s sad, too, and—

“Call them anyway,” Spencer says, lightly, still not moving an inch away from Brendon.

“Spence—” he tries to protest, but Spencer shakes his head and reaches across Brendon and snatches the phone back off the hook, holding it in his palm and waiting for Brendon to take it.

Brendon looks down and swallows, thinks about fighting Spencer over this, but then decides not to because it’s Christmas morning, his kids are happy and Spencer’s happy and the last thing he wants is a fight that sours the rest of the day for everyone.

He grabs the phone, gingerly, and looks at Spencer for that last little push he needs to start dialing, the number still memorized despite the years they’ve put between them.

Spencer doesn’t move an inch while Brendon waits for the call to ring into voicemail. It takes eight rings. He counts every time.

He debates hanging up on the sixth, because he knows what to expect, and he doesn’t see the point in waiting for the last ring just so he can listen to the voices of the people he hasn’t talked to in years on the answering machine before he hangs up and tears himself up about this all over again.

But Spencer’s making eyes at him that keep saying he’ll be there for when Brendon finishes, no matter what state he’s in, and he’s not letting go and he’s not going anywhere, and this isn’t back when they were 20, when Brendon was waking up every morning with Spencer in his bed and naked from the night before, expecting him to bolt the moment he opened his eyes and realized he wasn’t drunk anymore.

Spencer never left then, and Brendon knows better than to think he’s going to leave now, no matter how often his brain takes the more irrational route when he’s stressed or upset.

Brendon’s not even paying attention to the phone ringing anymore when there’s a click that Brendon thinks is voicemail, but then there’s a voice, and it’s wary and tentative and shy and it’s a “Hello?” and definitely not the opening to a new voicemail message, and Brendon’s throat closes up and he nearly drops the phone.

Spencer must notice the shift in Brendon’s posture, because he pulls back to look at Brendon’s eyes, trying to study his face for some kind of hint, and Brendon’s sort of doing one of those fish mouth things and his hand is a little shaky and he may or may not still be breathing.

But then the “hello?” repeats itself, a little shorter this time, like maybe it’s a crank call, and Brendon has no fucking clue how he suddenly finds all the confidence he had back when he was young and arrogant and trying to prove a point, and he’s saying “Hi, Kara?” and his voice is shaking worse than his hand but he doesn’t really care.

“Brendon?” She responds shakily, cautiously, and Brendon nods before he remembers she’s not actually here, she’s in another state entirely, and he says “Um, yeah,” quietly and waits for somewhere to go from there.

It’s quiet for long enough that Brendon’s starting to think she hung up on him, and Spencer’s just plain confused, because he’s still close enough to hear when there’s a voice on the other end, and Brendon’s just standing there, holding a quiet phone, trying to remember to blink. And breathe.

It finally breaks when Brendon forces out a shaky “hello?” and Kara responds with something like a breath, but Brendon can hear it, and he swallows a couple thousand times and asks “How are you?”

For whatever reason, Spencer takes that as his cue, and slowly unwraps himself from around Brendon, rubbing his hand over Brendon’s shoulder a couple of times and meeting his eyes before retreating back to the living room with the kids, sitting at the end of the couch so he’s still visible from the kitchen if Brendon cranes his neck.

“I’m—I’m good,” Kara sounds shaken, and a little shell-shocked, but she doesn’t sound angry, which is what Brendon had been expecting before he started expecting them to just not answer. “Things are— They’re good.” She pauses for a moment, taking in a breath, and Brendon wonders if she’s chewing on her lip, wonders if she still does that after all this time, and then says “How’re you?”

Brendon completely forgets every single word in the English language for a moment and mumbles out something that is a series of consonants, definitely not a word, and then quickly covers with a rushed “Good, I’m good…too. I— Yeah.”

“That’s…good,” Kara responds back, and Brendon’s pretty sure more than half the words in this entire conversation have been “good” but he doesn’t give a flying fuck, because this is the first time he’s heard his sister’s voice in— Hell, how long has it been now?

There’s another silence, and then Kara bursts out with “What are you calling about?” and Brendon winces, because he knows this part, and this is the part where he fumbles over his words and tries to get in a short explanation, only to find out that he’s been hung up on as soon as everyone knows he’s not dying in the next week or renouncing every single thing about his life for the past two decades and coming back to the family, to the church.

But he must’ve picked up some sort of confidence bug somewhere, because his voice is steady and calm when he says “I call every year, Kara.”

“You do?” She asks, and she sounds like she legitimately didn’t know, and Brendon wants to believe her so he does.

“Yeah,” Brendon says, a little sadly, and shifts to listen to the living room for a moment, trying to judge if Spencer and the kids are still watching TV, oblivious to him having a damn heart attack in the room over. “Every year.”

“Oh,” Kara responds, and then stops. Brendon doesn’t know what to say, or what to do, but he’s suddenly desperate to keep her on the line, clinging to this tiny glimmer of his family after so long, and he knows, as soon as this all goes south, he’s going to feel like he lost his family all over again, and Spencer’s going to be the one to have to pick up the pieces.

He flails, trying to find something to say before Kara hangs up or the line just goes dead or he drops the phone, but he still hasn’t found anything to say so he just starts with “Kara—” rushed and desperate, at the same time Kara says “Brendon—” and they both just stop again.

This is terrifying, and nerve-wracking, and Brendon is gripping the counter so hard he’s worried he’s going to crack the granite, or maybe his hand. He is so far out of his league, he doesn’t even know how to get back to it.

“I’ve missed you,” Kara says softly, apropos of nothing, and Brendon pretty much melts into a puddle on the kitchen floor, his shoulders relaxing into this loose curve and his chest unclenching. “I’ve missed you, too,” he says carefully, and before he lets himself stop, he asks “How are the kids?”

Brendon can tell Kara smiles, and she starts talking about her kids, Brendon’s niece and nephew, the ones he’s never met, how they’re living their lives and how Mattie’s going off to college in the fall and Sarah’s finally starting to learn how to drive and she and Jacob keep flipping coins to decide who has to go driving with her.

Brendon’s grin is a mile wide as Kara keeps talking, and she has so much to tell him and so much to say and so much to catch up on because Brendon’s never heard any of this, and he’s breathing in her words like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. He laughs when Kara finishes with a funny story about Matt and Sarah and the tent they refused to let anyone take down for weeks, and his chest feels so light even though it hurts, because there are so many stories about these amazing people, and they’re his family but he has no idea who they are. He doesn’t even know what Kara’s kids look like.

But it’s so much more than he ever had before, and he won’t let anything spoil that right now, because he knows full well this could be the last time he hears anything from his family ever again. This is that once-in-a-blue-moon moment, some mistake or coincidence of timing and fate, that Kara was there to answer the phone instead of letting it ring like his parents would have, like they had been for years.

Brendon’s breath catches when she finally grows tired of telling stories and asks how Brendon is, what he’s been up to, where he’s living and what he’s doing with his life. He doesn’t know how to go about this, doesn’t quite remember how much Kara knew about him or why he left when he was seventeen or why no one from the family has spoken to him in years and years.

He tries the safe route, talks about how nice the weather in LA is, how close they are to the ocean, how much he loves it here and how different it is from Vegas. He talks about the time he spent in Chicago, how cold the winters were there, how much he loved studying music, even if it was just at a community college.

Brendon winces right after he slips and says something about Sadie, and he feels like he just got caught up in a landslide and can’t find anything to hold on to because Kara’s going to ask questions and he doesn’t know how to cover. He knew it would happen, eventually, but he’d still hoped to hold on to this moment a bit longer, and the moment Kara asks—

“Who’s Sadie?”

Brendon swallows, shifts the phone to his other ear and tries to breathe evenly. He thinks about covering with something like “my girlfriend” or “my friend” but Kara’s not stupid enough to fall for the girlfriend lie and he wouldn’t know how to explain that his “friend” was only thirteen without sounding like a creep. He figures the truth is the only option left, and he crosses his fingers in the hope that Kara won’t ask too many questions, and maybe he can distract her with the kids so she won’t start asking about Spencer.

“My daughter,” he replies as calmly as he can manage, and Kara’s making some sort of strangled squeak on the other end of the line, and for a moment he’s worried she’s choked on something but then she sighs and says “Oh, _Brendon,_ ” and he knows exactly what she means by that.

Kara doesn’t seem to know quite how to proceed, so Brendon fills in the gaps for her, waxing lyrical about his kids because that’s one thing he’s learned how to do quite well. “Sadie’s thirteen and she’s starting to get hips and I’m honestly considering never letting her leave the house ever again, but then she’s going to complain about how Parker—my son, he’s eight—still gets to go out and I’m a sucker for her logic. I can never win an argument, she’s too smart.”

Kara laughs, sort of softly and a little contained, and Brendon hopes Sadie doesn’t hear him talking about her in the other room, because then she’s bound to ask questions and everything is so fragile already, he’s worried.

“And she’s started locking herself in her room and she never puts down her phone, I swear it’s like a fight just to have a conversation with her face-to-face, I’m starting to worry I’m going to forget what she looks like and then she’s going to emerge one day and I’m going to ask who she is and threaten to call the police or something.”

Brendon’s rambling because he’s nervous, but Kara’s laughing on the other end of the line and he finds he can’t really wipe the smile from his face so he doesn’t try.

“Parker doesn’t get it yet, he’s still too young, we gave him a phone in case of emergencies and he never brings it with him, he’s always rushing out of the house to go climb trees or play soccer or roll around in mud, with the way he comes home covered in it, and trying to get him to sit still long enough to eat dinner is a workout in itself. But he’s so talkative, and he asks so many questions that even his teachers start getting annoyed, which is ridiculous because kids are supposed to ask questions and I’m going to have words with the next teacher that tells him to stop asking so many questions.”

Kara’s still laughing, and Brendon feels it in his chest, the bubbling, happy feeling that still comes from hearing his sister laugh, and he’s honestly shocked that it still happens after the years he spent trying to convince himself that they didn’t care about him anymore.

“Brendon, we never— I didn’t even know you had kids, I—”

“I know, Kara,” Brendon cuts her off, because if he lets her go on, she’s going to start getting weepy and it’s Christmas morning and Brendon doesn’t want that. He must’ve sounded a little sadder than he meant to when he said that thought, because Kara’s sighing and the mood shifts before he can steer it back to something light and happy again.

“How did things get like this, B?” Kara asks softly, just above a whisper, and Brendon wonders if she doesn’t want anyone to hear this part of the conversation, wonders where everyone else is, why Kara answered the phone at his parent’s house and why she didn’t all the years before.

Brendon doesn’t respond, because he knows the answer and this was the one thing he didn’t want to bring up because it was a surefire way to end the conversation. But maybe, if it was Kara and not his parents—

“You know how it got here,” he whispers, and it’s soft and not threatening, not accusing, just a simple statement of fact.

Kara waits a moment, takes in a breath and holds it before saying “I know.”

There’s a silence on the line, a different kind of silence than the ones before, the awkward in-between ones. This one is them waiting to take it all in, waiting for the air to clear so they can try again with a fresh start. It’s brilliant, it is, but it’s so, so fragile.

“You should come see us, Brendon,” Kara says, and her voice is stronger now, more insistent, and now that Brendon’s fairly sure she’s not going to scream about hellfire and hang up on him, he’s taking a few more risks, saying the things on his mind rather than just the things that will keep her there longer.

“You know I can’t,” he answers softly, and he’s trying to put all his emotions into his tone, tell her that it’s not her fault and he knows that, tell her that some things are just out of their control.

“You _can,_ ” she pushes, and she sounds a little upset now, and Brendon’s worried it’s his fault, worried she thinks he doesn’t want to see them, but—

“I _can’t,_ Kara, Mom and Dad—”

“Mom and Dad can go to h—”

“Kara!” Brendon cuts her off, and he’s never heard her this angry before, never known her this worked up. It’s a little shocking. She’d always been the good child, the caretaker, the one to go off and get married and raise kids the way his parents always wanted, and Brendon’s almost amazed that he never resented her for that, for setting the stakes too high, even though she knew he couldn’t reach them. “You know I can’t.” Brendon doesn’t elaborate because he knows Kara understands, and he’s hoping she won’t push it because he’s not sure how much longer he wants to drag this issue on.

Apparently, Kara doesn’t think the same way he does. “You have kids now,” she starts up hopefully, talking quickly, planning in a desperate way that almost hurts in Brendon’s chest because he knows he’s going to have to keep shooting her down. “It’s different, you have kids and—”

“And I’m raising them with Spencer,” Brendon finishes for her, before she can try to gloss over the elephant in the room, the major flaw in this plan. He wishes, beyond anything, that this could work out, that this whole thing was some sort of Christmas miracle and his parents are just going to completely forget his almost-husband in lieu of meeting his children. Brendon wishes he didn’t know them as well as he did to understand that they’d never do that.

Kara’s silent on the other end, and maybe it’s because Brendon finally went and said it, or maybe it’s because she can’t seem to pick up the scattered pieces of logic she’d been trying to fit together before and form into something workable, press onwards despite.

“Kara—” he starts, trying to keep her calm so he doesn’t mess up her Christmas anymore than he already has.

“This is horrible,” she says shakily, and Brendon’s heart cracks a little at how sad she sounds. He knew the falling out had been hard on all of them, but most of the time Brendon liked to pretend that his family didn’t care. He liked to think that the moment he said he couldn’t, he couldn’t be who they wanted him to be, that they cut all ties and never looked back, like ripping off a band-aid on a wound that’s long since healed. Logically, he knew it wasn’t that simple for them, but he was the one who pulled the short straw. They still had each other; he had himself and the few friends he’d managed to hold onto.

Brendon sighs, ready to take the fall again and release Kara from the blame, because he hates hearing her like this, especially on Christmas, and he’s so ready to launch into a speech he knows too well, about how it was his choice to move on with his own life, how there was nothing to be done because their ideals were just too different, how she shouldn’t worry about him because he’s doing fine without them, he’s moved on and has a wonderful life and a family and he’s happy, so things can just stay how they are and—

And Kara apparently doesn’t want to hear his speech, because Brendon hears quick, sharp footsteps across the tile in the kitchen that his parent’s should’ve replaced years ago, he hears the rush of sounds as Kara carries the phone into another room, then probably down into the den where all the kids would be scattered on the floor, surrounded by wrapping paper as the adults sit around smiling and talking about things the kids have no interest in.

He only realizes what’s about to happen moments before it does, because he can hear a woman’s voice—his mother’s voice, Brendon realizes, and his chest pings—ask “Who’s on the phone, Kara?” and then he’s practically shouting down the line at Kara, asking her to just stop, things are fine, she doesn’t have to say anything, he didn’t want—

But she’s obviously not listening because the air rushing down the phone line tells Brendon that she’s waving the phone around by now, angrily, and he hears a soft, timid “Kara?” from her husband before she starts yelling, and Brendon didn’t mean for this to happen, he just wanted to wish his family a Merry Christmas and then Kara had to go and be all heroic.

“Brendon’s on the phone, mother,” Kara responds sharply, and Brendon digs his nails into his palm and wills himself to put the phone down and stop listening. He didn’t want Kara to do this, go and change things, he just wants—

Brendon doesn’t know what he wants anymore, and he feels small and a little scared, faced with his family again for the first time in so long, and he can still picture their faces, staring at Kara, confused and hurt and even he doesn’t understand why Kara’s yelling, why she’s saying all these things.

Brendon slumps down against the cabinets under the counter, phone pressed to his ear so tightly that it’s going to leave marks for hours, and he feels like he’s in high school again, hugging his knees to his chest and trying to make himself as small as possible, like maybe all the things he doesn’t want to know about the world will leave him alone if they can’t see him from the windows.

He mostly tunes out, because there’s no room for him to speak, and he doesn’t know why Kara hasn’t hung up yet. It’s obvious she’s not thinking about the phone, or about Brendon listening to all of this on the other line, shivering even though he isn’t cold and wishing for a moment that he hadn’t called. It’s Christmas, and the last thing Brendon wanted was for his family to get in this kind of fight on Christmas. There are probably still kids in the room, listening, confused and not quite understanding what anything’s about.

Every so often Kara says something that rings through his ears and sticks with him, bouncing around in his head like a pinball, and it hurts in Brendon’s chest, the worn kind of hurt he’s used to interlaced with something akin to pride.

He shouldn’t be cheering Kara on, but there’s a small part of him that wants to shake apart at the fact that she’s doing this. For him. Christ.

_Yeah. Brendon, mom. The son you forgot? The one you shoved under the rug and—_

Brendon shuts his eyes tight and keeps trying to pull the phone away from his ear, but it’s like there’s some sort of string holding it to him, just close enough to hear everything Kara is saying and some of the sounds in the room from the people around him.

He thinks calling was a horrible idea.

He hadn’t actually expected anyone to pick up. They never did. But he always felt like shit if he didn’t try, at least once a year, on Christmas, just in case— Well, just in case someone picked up.

He never really got past that part in his head, though. He called and kept hoping for an answer, but everything after that was a white page, completely unscripted, and he didn’t know why he’d called in the first place if he didn’t have a plan. He never actually expected this.

Brendon hears his mother quoting Leviticus, and he hates that goddamned verse, the whole book, the stupid fucking words that had kept his family from him for all this time, and he doesn’t want to listen to it again and realize all over again that his family really doesn’t want him. Doesn’t want anything to do with him, or with Spencer, or with his kids, just _because_ of Spencer.

He never wants to blame Spencer for anything, for any of this. Spencer makes him happy. He kisses him awake in the morning and holds him close at night, and he makes jokes just to make Brendon smile and he laughs into Brendon’s hair and he loves their kids, loves their kids so much and their family and their life, and it’s all filled with so much happiness that Brendon can’t even fathom the idea that the reason his family doesn’t talk to him is because of Spencer.

Spencer had thought the same thing, back when this whole thing first started. He’d avoided Brendon because he was so worried about…he said something like—fucking up his “life plans”—or whatever, and Brendon had to convince him that his worries were stupid because Brendon wasn’t going to just give up and marry a girl if he couldn’t have Spencer.

Even after they started dating, Spencer was always so tentative. Brendon had still been clinging on to the little contact he did have with his family, a fragile lifeline that Brendon always knew wouldn’t last forever. He’d been upset when it finally did snap, when his mother hissed at him down the phone line after he mistakenly tried to tell her that he loved Spencer, and every one of his calls was rejected. But he was okay, because he still had Spencer, and he still had the band, back then. And he was convinced he didn’t need a family if it meant he could have those things. He didn’t expect Spencer to become his family, but it worked out anyway.

Kara’s still furious, and Brendon winces when he hears her voice again. She’s so sweet and always so kind and understanding, she’s always been because she’s _Kara,_ and Brendon feels like shit for turning her into this, for sending her into this kind of a rage and he didn’t want this to be what his family was like. He didn’t want his family to fight about him. He’d spent his teenage years cursing them and hoping every little thing he did would reach them somehow, sting at their hearts and make them regret what they did, but as he got older he just hoped that they were happy. That they were getting along without him and not letting all the things in their past follow them to the present and crush them.

He sighs and presses the heel of his palm to his eye, rubbing until little dots of color pinprick his eyelids.

_Is that what this family is, now? A model for the church?_

_Kara, the Bible is very clear on—_

_Where in the Bible does it say that you’re not allowed to talk to your family if they— Just because he—_

Brendon bites his lip as hard as he can, because they still can’t say it. He didn’t think they would. They’d spent so many years carefully avoiding the topic, pretending like he’d never been a part of the family to begin with. He always wondered, after he left…whether they kept the pictures of him on the mantel. Whether they still had a picture of the band sitting next to Kara’s graduation photos or Michael’s mission photos or Jason’s wedding photos.

Maybe they’d just erased him altogether. If he hadn’t called—

_Yes, he can’t be a part of the church, I get that! But our family is not the church. Just because they shun him doesn’t mean we—_

Brendon screws his eyes open and glances over to the doorway, tilting his head to try to see into the living room where Spencer should still be sitting with the kids. He doesn’t have the right angle, can’t see anything but the flicker of the TV on the wall in the back, but he doesn’t think anyone’s moved. Sadie loves Christmas movies more than she lets on, and Parker is probably so full with candy that the only way he could move was if Spencer rolled him along the floor. He smiles a bit at that image, thinks about goofing around with them later, turning the whole thing into a tickle fight and dragging Sadie into it before she could scoff and hide in her room like she didn’t enjoy their antics.

Unfortunately, Kara won’t let him leave. She’s got him clinging to the phone even though he hates it, hates this, and she’s being such a moron, she should’ve just left it alone or never answered the damn phone and—

_Jesus, he has kids now, mom! You have grandkids you’ve never even met because you’re too stubborn—_

Shit. Brendon had been hoping she wouldn’t mention that. He has no idea how much his family knows about his life now, whether they still followed his name in the tabloids after Brendon and Spencer decided to take a break with music to “concentrate on other endeavors” which was really just code for “we can’t start a family on a tour bus” especially seeing as how they lacked the necessary parts to do everything themselves, anyway.

He didn’t really want his parents to have another thing to feel bad about.

He thinks about the way his kids are growing up, so differently from him. Allowed to love whomever they want, and believe in whatever kind of God they want to believe in, or none at all. About how he’d never give his kids an ultimatum like “devote your life to the church or leave the house” which might be an exaggeration of what his parents had said to him, but not by much.

He wants to hate his parents, still. He wants to tell them they were shitty parents and even shittier people, but they’re still his family and he can’t. He understands now, so many years later, that they thought what they were doing was right. They thought they were steering him down the right path and they didn’t do it intentionally to make him miserable, they just didn’t realize that the right way for Brendon was a little different from the right way for them. For their ideals.

_Maybe I don’t want to be part of a religion that condones kicking your seventeen-year-old son out of the house because he likes boys!_

Brendon chokes on air and spends half a minute coughing up a lung and trying to get his breathing back to normal before he can even process what Kara just said or tune in to the rest of the conversation. He had no idea she’d ever go that far. Brendon knew Kara followed the church for the most part, raised her kids to be proper and devout and respectful and he knew that she read the Bible on occasion for guidance, or at least she used to when Brendon had still kept in contact with her.

_I can’t deal with you anymore, mom. Come on, Jacob, Mattie, Sarah, we’re leaving._

Brendon’s breath hitches and he tries to keep calm and steady and just keep breathing, because this was all too much and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. He’s sitting on the floor of his kitchen on Christmas morning, hugging his knees and the phone and hoping Spencer doesn’t come in before he’s composed himself. That’s how he’s dealing with this. By hiding like a kid from a monster in his closet, ducking under the covers and hoping it all just goes away when the lights come on.

“Kara—” he tries, but his voice rasps and she likely doesn’t even realize the phone’s still connected. He doesn’t know what to do. He feels like he just broke his family, again, when he didn’t mean to. He definitely didn’t mean to.

“Brendon?” Kara’s voice asks tentatively, and he can hear rustling around her, likely everyone grabbing coats and presents and things near the door.

He tries to respond but has to clear his throat first, and when he says “Yeah?” it’s shaky and small and he feels like he’s a teenager again, standing on wobbly knees and expected to sing for the world, so big and so full of things he didn’t understand yet.

Kara sighs, and Brendon wonders if she started crying, during all that, because her voice doesn’t sound as even as it did before and he likes to think he can still recognize what his sister sounds like when she’s been crying. It makes him feel like he’s at home.

“I— Sorry about all that, I didn’t mean to start something up, but someone needed to say it and— Well, I figured it was about time. Sorry for—Actually, I’m not really sorry about that, just…” She sighed again, and mumbled something to Jacob that Brendon couldn’t hear, the kind of secret, simple things that couples say to each other when they need it, and Brendon knows what it means even if he can’t hear the words. Spencer’s done the same to him a few times.

“You should fly back to Vegas,” Kara says suddenly, and Brendon’s eyes widen a little bit and blink because he didn’t think he heard her right. “Or we can fly out there, it doesn’t matter, I just— We should get in touch. I want—” She stops, a little flustered, and Brendon thinks maybe her cheeks are pinking through all this, suddenly embarrassed even though she just spent the last few minutes screaming at her entire family. “I don’t know about Mom and Dad, I can’t speak for them anymore, but I’d love to meet your kids—Sadie and Parker, right? I just…”

“Okay,” Brendon responds before he know what it means, and he can feel the grin spreading over Kara’s face before he hears her say “Okay? Okay. That’s great, that’s— Let me give you my number, I don’t know if you have it, we’ve moved and do you have a pen?”

“Yeah,” Brendon croaks out, scrambling to find something to write with on the counters, fumbling across a purple gel pen that Brendon’s pretty sure is Sadie’s and he doesn’t have time to find paper so he writes it on his arm, both her cell and their land line, and Brendon shoots off his number in return, and there’s something hot and light filling up his chest. He can’t fight down the manic smile or the burst of laughter the nearly drowns out Kara’s flustered “Oops!” Apparently, Jacob reminded her that the phone she was carrying around actually belonged in that house.

He hears a rushed run back inside—Brendon can’t imagine she wants to stick around after all that—and then a rushed “Goodbye, I love you, call me!” before the phone clicks.

Brendon keeps the phone pressed to his ear until the automated telephone woman tells him the call has been disconnected, and he should hang up and try again.

Fuck.

He presses the red button with fingers that aren’t even a little bit shaky anymore. He feels like his chest is about to burst. He kind of can’t stop smiling.

Before he does something stupid like shower, he takes a moment to find a sheet of paper and copy the number on his arm down, still in that same purple, sparkly ink. He folds it carefully and pins it to the fridge, because at least then he knows he won’t lose it. That number feels like a fucking lifeline.

There’s a moment where he just stands and breathes, because he can’t quite remember what it feels like, and then he walks over to the living room, where his family is still sitting, watching that one movie with the Matilda chick in it. “Spence,” he says, soft. Sadie and Parker don’t even blink. Spencer looks up, takes one look at his face, and stands to meet him under the archway.

He curls a hand around Brendon’s neck, guides them to the side of the wall so they’re almost out of view of the kids, and asks, concerned “Are you okay?”

And Brendon—He honestly just—God, he loves this man. This man and his stupid, uncanny ability to understand everything, ever, except, it seems, in this very moment. Because Brendon is _so_ okay, he’s fucking—fucking flying, that’s how okay he is.

He wants to tell Spencer, and he imagines he will, eventually, but for now all he can do is start laughing. Once he starts, it just escalates, and he grips the front of Spencer’s old band T-shirt that somehow still fits, and presses his face to Spencer’s chest and chokes out slightly hysterical laughs until he’s all but hyperventilating. Spencer gets worried, at some point, or he must, because his hands seem sort of unsure as they wrap around Brendon, rubbing up and down his back. “Bren?” he asks, tentatively.

Brendon pulls back, smiling bright and so fucking happy, and he just presses his grin to Spencer’s lips, not really a kiss, just—something comfortable. Something _them_.

“Bren?” he hears again, mumbled against his lips and his teeth, and Brendon finally finds the will to stop grinning like a fucking lunatic and actually _kiss_ Spencer, happy and maybe a little desperate, against the wall.

He wants nothing more than to drag Spencer upstairs, lock the door and take him apart, because Brendon feels like he could move mountains or build cities or fill the entire universe with light, so much light, for the first time. And he doesn’t know what to do with all that. He’s never, in his entire life, felt like this—save for maybe the day he married Spencer, and the day each of his kids was born.

It’s fucking fantastic, and it’s also making everyone very confused, apparently. Because Spencer’s got a crease between his eyebrows and a slightly amused expression on when Brendon pulls away and presses his nose and his open mouth to Spencer’s neck, just resting there.

And then the whole sex thing is kind of derailed when Sadie walks out into the front hall and looks at them, then asks, skeptically, “Is everything okay?” Parker trails on his sister’s heels, peering at them quizzically.

And everything _is_ okay, is the thing. It’s fucking _wonderful,_ and he doesn’t know how to tell them this, how to show them the shape of his joy, relief, love—everything. It’s like watching stars explode, so bright and warm and beautiful and so _powerful._ It’s like realizing for the first time that the sky is endless, boundless, and that everything is expanding, shooting out, reaching farther and farther without end. Because he has his family back—not the family he made for himself, but the one that made him—the people that had been so constant for so long and then just disappeared, like shadows in the night. His children get to meet Kara, get to meet his family—or, at least, a part of it—and he gets to share this with them. He gets to show them this part of his life, and it’s like light. It’s like the first light—like when the universe was too young to know anything but darkness, and then suddenly, everything came together, and there was light shooting out into the expanse of black, never to be reigned in again.

He smiles, because he gets to have this family, and he laughs because he gets to have his other family, too. He gets to have all of it, and he’s so damn lucky.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at Spencer and the amused confusion wrought on his features, and smiles. “Everything’s okay. It’s—” He leaves it at that, because there’s no possible way to explain this in words, this boundless love; like breathing, like stars, like light.


End file.
